Ouroboros
by Zeitgeist84
Summary: AU. 1912. Booker DeWitt awaits execution after committing a heinous crime against the U.S. Army. Days before his date with the scaffold, two redheads appear in his cell and predict the appearance of two BOI agents who offer DeWitt a chance at freedom if he can smuggle a package safely out of the floating city of Columbia. The catch? The package is a live girl with plans of her own.
1. A Man

Ouroboros

1. A Man

* * *

><p>You know, years ago... before all this started, I think I was five years old when I watched my father lock Tessie up in a cage, go inside the house for a stiff shot of whiskey, and then come back out, calm as you like, and empty the single shot in the family revolver right between her eyes.<p>

See, Tess, our family dog, she was a bright beautiful thing: she was a chocolate Border Collie and the second sweetest creature God ever put on this green earth. She was the kind of dog that, if you put your hand anywhere near her face, she lather it in ticklish kisses and licks. Rosemary, my sister, the aforementioned only creature sweeter than Tess, liked that the best. Me, I preferred being curled up with Tess and reading a book during those ice cold Illinois winters.

But, you see, one day, she was out in the prairie, doin' her thing, when a beast came from some far-off brush. She was bit, and she started getting aggressive within hours, not even days. Eight years of nothin' but love, erased in a few short moments. She didn't lick at our hands anymore; she just snapped at them. We knew almost immediately, and dad took care of it. He dragged that poor beast, snarling and snapping... I don't know how he managed to not get bit... but he dragged Tess through the brush to the cage we never used and threw her in there. It was the first time I could remember locking her up.

And then he came out with big ol' revolver, one bullet in it, face slightly reddened from the alcohol, and made me watch as he put the dog out of her misery.

Dad said, "Booker, if anyone ever comes after you, you shoot 'em dead in one shot. One bullet is all you should ever need."

Kind of fucked up in hindsight, but it _was_ good advice.

We moved to the city soon after that. Farming wasn't the way to go anymore, not when we couldn't compete with the meat packers in Chicago, so we loaded up and moved into a tiny, filthy tenement miles away from The Loop, hell, it wasn't even _called_ 'The Loop' back then.

You can guess what happened after: Dad died just over a year later at Haymarket Square, Mama went by the Pox, and Rosie went missing at that hotel in the White City. By '98, I was charging a damned hill in Cuba, so you can guess _exactly_ where my life went from there.

But even after all that, the only thing that never leaves me is Tess: I still remember her twitching at yapping in her cage, trying to gnaw away at those iron-wrought bars with her foaming mouth, only to drop like a sack of bricks at the bullet.

It ain't right to cage a dog. Even less so, a human.

But here I am, in a cage waiting for the hangman's noose. Oh, I'm deserving, I reckon. But, honestly, if I have to hear that damned priest sing '_Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot_' one more time, I'm gonna find a way to hang _him_._  
><em>

Still, ain't nothing I can do about it right now but sit around and wait for priest to give me my last rights. So, I sit back against the flimsy cot they call bedding and close my eyes, willing myself to go to sleep. It almost works, until it happens:

"_Swing Lo, sweet chariot,_

_Coming forth to carry me home_!"

I'm gonna kill him. I truly am going to kill him.

I get up, bare feet on the grimy floor and step up to the iron-wrought bars: "Hey, would you shut up in there!?" The singing, if anything, gets louder. "Bastards," I mutter, shaking my head down the cell block where the awful choir is coming from.

"Well, this is quite different," a feminine voice says somewhere behind me, startling me. I whirl around and spot two redheaded people in my previously empty, locked cell staring back at me with perfectly placid looks on their plain faces, as though simply appearing in a condemned man's cell was nothing short of ordinary.

"Different? Yes. Better? I have my doubts," the man, with a coiffed haircut and freckles replies.

How the hell did these two get in here!? "Wha—? I—Who are you? How did you get in here?"

The woman's ageless features curl into a light sneer, in the same way God must do to a prideful man. "Oh, how very tedious."

"He may be here..." The man continues, pointing at me.

"...but he speaks no better. _C'est la vie,_" the woman finishes with a shrug and a flourish of her hands.

The man starts speaking once more, that unconcerned look back on his face: "Why is it always that?"

"Why ask 'who we are', and 'how we are'..." the woman says for her male doppelganger once more.

"When the most delightful questions you want to be asking are 'why we are' and 'when we are'?"

"Fine," I reply. "Why are you? As in, 'Why are you here? In this cell at this very moment'."

"Ooh," the woman smirks, "that's much more like it."

"Why _and_ when, together in _one_!"

"You do impress us, Booker DeWitt."

"How do you know my name?" I shoot back.

"Is there any reason we shouldn't know your name, Mister DeWitt?" Asks the man slowly, with such preternatural calm that I almost find myself frightened by it. Almost.

"That's not an answer," I growl.

"What a temper," the man sniffs disdainfully.

"You'll have to keep that in check..."

"...Especially when _they_ come by."

What? When _who_ comes by? The executioner? I open my mouth with a choice barb at the tip of my tongue when the woman smiles coldly and nods, and another voice somewhere down the cell block hall calls for my attention:

"DeWitt! Booker DeWitt!"

I pivot back toward the strange people only to find thin air where they once were. I must be going insane. And, frankly, I'm not surprised.

A pair of freshly shined black boots step up to my cell, protecting two sets of expensive oxfords. "Mr. DeWitt, Booker, is that right?" The man interrogates, rather than asks. His tone is low and growling, as though long years of savage cross-examination had turned his voice naturally fierce.

"Yes," I reply, not really wanting to get into it with a guard today, "that's me."

"You have visitors," he replies simply, but severely, stepping aside to reveal two men in matching, drab gray three-piece suits.

The shorter of the two, a stern-looking middle-aged gentleman with a coiffed widow's peak and spectacles over his well-lined and clean-shaven face, merely stares me with some gusto, like some sort of science experiment while the other, a younger man with sun-blonde hair and a big, golden beard smiles easily at me:

"Well, if it ain't the _White Devil_ himself," his voice is a slow-as-molasses southern drawl. I can't put exactly where he's from, but if I were to guess, it'd be one of the Carolinas, "defender of Chinamen and nigger-lover."

Well, that's just rude.

"Shut your mouth, Agent, or I'll shut it for you," the older man has an unaccented voice, strange for these parts. "Mr. DeWitt. Your reputation precedes you."

"Oh, does it?" I deadpan, wrapping my arms around the bars of the cell. "_White Devil_'s a cute name, but I don't think it fits."

The elder man shrugs. "I'm not concerned with your name; I'm concerned with you, DeWitt. You killed eight men who served with you in Garryowen under Captain Cornelius Slate in cold blood. You killed the Captain himself with naught more than a rusty dagger and a dull hatchet. You're about to hang for nine counts of butchering military personnel. A lot of people want to see you dead."

"And you?"

"No, not me," he says, before throwing an askance glance at the Southern gentleman, "but he may."

"Better pitch a tent, then," I say to the younger man with a cynical chuckle. "By tomorrow morning, you may just get your wish."

My father was a Southerner. Came from a relatively well-off family in Georgia, fought for the Confederates in the 'War of Northern Aggression', not because he cared about an asinine cause like slavery, but because that's what men did. They fought for their homes.

Now my father told me that Southern men came in two flavors: the noble man, and the bigot. Some were just noble, others, just bigoted, but most were both. And it was an ugly combination. Hypocrisy must rolled off them like fleas off a stray dog. But after the war, the bigots grew louder and larger.

This younger, Southern man is cut from that cloth, I could tell the second I saw him. He cracks a malicious grin and crosses his arms, a barb on the tip of his forked tongue.

"Whether fortunately or unfortunately, that isn't going to happen, Mr. DeWitt. Unless you wish it to be so," interrupts the elder man before the younger could add fuel to any fire.

I give the man a special kind of look reserved for liars and the mentally retarded, but he merely returns it with an unsmiling stare, making me feel more a fool than I do him:

"Agent McNally," he greets in a stiff tone. "BOI."

"Hm..." I begin, stroking a chin. "So you're Bureau Boys then? That's interesting."

"Well, then you're going to like this Mr. DeWitt. We've been assigned to help you get out of the mess you've let yourself into," McNally says simply before turning away from me and my presumably befuddled expression to the guard that had been yelling out my name earlier. "Let him out," he orders the guard, who looks back dubiously. "That's an order. Let Mister DeWitt out, give him the clothes, and kindly escort him to our carriage."

* * *

><p>Could this be what those two lunatics were talking about? The redheads?<p>

They took me from the cell, dressed me up in swanky clothes and a topcoat, which seemed rather unnecessary since it was the dead heat of July. But hey, I'm not complaining.

That's how I find myself here, on a train to the Capitol, with a thick-looking file atop a fixed table and the two BOI Agents giving me the eye when all I want to do is look out the window and take in the sights.

"Enjoying freedom, I take it, DeWitt?" McNally asks with a thin smile.

It's been months since I've seen the outside of a cell. "Man ain't meant to be caged," I reply simply, the implication of the statement settles coldly over the room.

The Southerner, whose name I learned is Agent Doyle, doesn't like the sentiment and pipes up. "Not when he don't kill a tenner of military personnel, he don't. But I seen pictures o'what you did to Slate and his men. Now I don't know what he did to you, but that was savage, like one of them Injuns came and tore through them houses."

"Some people deserve the killing," I state stoically. What happened between Slate, his men and I is our business, eleven years in the making, I ain't about to spill the beans to some Jim Crow shill.

"That ain't killing, that's butchery."

"You're right, it ain't," I reply, boring holes into the man's brown eyes. "It's exactly what it's supposed to be."

"And what'chu mean by that?"

"You butcher animals, not men."

A deep silence settles over us, and I decide that now's as good a time as any to survey that file McNally threw me. At the top of the file, the word "Columbia" is stamped over it. Huh, Columbia? The only Columbia I know, besides the capitol, was taken down nearly twenty years ago, after the Fair.

"Columbia?" I ask, looking up from the file. "I know all about the White City, I grew up in Chicago."

"Ain't the same Columbia, DeWitt. The White City was impressive, but it ain't got horse's piss on this 'Columbia'," Doyle says. "Open it up."

I comply, opening up the cardstock of the file and coming up on a picture of a beautiful, pensive young woman. Scrawled on the side of the picture is the word "ELIZABETH", in all capitals. The picture is clipped to a report, not unlike the ones I filed when I worked for the police department for those few short years after Peking. And what I find, is too ridiculous to sum up in words. So I start laughing. Not a full-blown one, just the mildly amused chuckle of a man who feels his leg is being pulled just a little too hard.

"Is there something amusing about this, Mister DeWitt?" Intones McNally with a disquieting sobriety.

It isn't enough to deter me, though. "You can't be serious about this."

"I assure you," continues the middle-aged BOI agent, "this is no joke. If it was, I would be smiling. Am I smiling?"

No, no he's not. But I'd be very surprised if the man could smile at all.

"You can't possibly expect me to believe there is a floating city up in the sky that no one knows about," I say, looking to Doyle, of all people, for help. Southerners may be jingoistic and morally schizophrenic, but they usually had their heads on straight about the limits of the possible (except, of course, when it comes to God).

But he seems to be a dullard, too; he's bought the floating city story hook, line, and sinker:

"Oh, folks know alright," he says, leaning back against his seat. "Maybe not the little man, but anyone who's anyone knows that Columbia is out there somewhere, sure as day turns to night."

"And the girl?" I ask, pointing to the picture of the pretty woman. "Elizabeth?"

McNally narrows his eyes and leans forward, as if he's choosing next words carefully. "Despite what may have prompted you two to... whatever it may have been... Captain Slate did have positive things to say about you. That you were a soldier that could not only fight fairly, but operate 'on the sly' as well."

"Quieter than a redskin, deadlier than a chink with a sword, and fiercer than a cornered nigger," Doyle says, earning irate glares from both his partner and I.

"Do not speak unless spoken to, Agent Doyle; I will not warn you again."

That seems to stop the racist dead in his tracks. "A-aye, sir," he says once before falling silent and allowing McNally to tell me exactly what I'm getting myself into:

"That girl is your target."

I'm skeptical, and for good reason, I think. "She looks... barely twenty."

"Nineteen, if the reports are to be believed," McNally replies with a slight smile.

"And you want me to... put her down? A nineteen year-old girl?"

McNally laughs: it's long, loud, and booming, so unlike the calm, composed man that sat in front of me moments ago. "No, Mister DeWitt, I don't want her dead. I want you to rescue her from those... extremist _dogs_ and bring her back to Washington unharmed. It's a task only a man with your skill and reputation can accomplish, and, in return, I will personally oversee you receive immunity for this crime signed by President Taft himself, a new identity, and a new home in London if you bring Elizabeth to us."

"All of that for a teenager in a floating city? I'm a little skeptical; what's the catch?"

"No catch: bring her back alive and you'll get your immunity."

"Uh-huh," I nod, unimpressed. "And why me? Couldn't you get someone else to do it 'on the sly'?"

"Well, there are some men in our employ that could ostensibly do it," McNally says, "but the problem is that they are _in our employ_. Columbia is the home of religious extremists who will attack if provoked. If a military man is caught, they'll find out we were behind it and then we'll find ourselves in a war no one wants. With you, however..."

"You can deny involvement," I answer for him,."Clever. And if I say no?"

"Well, you can go back to prison and wait for the hangman."

Well, when you put it like that... "I guess, then, I've got no choice but to say yes then."

The BOI agent grins. "Good man. I'd had a feeling you'd say so," he leans back. "There's not enough time to, nor is it safe to discuss this any further than we already have. Further instructions will be given to you once you get to the lighthouse."

"The lighthouse?"

"Off the coast of Maine. Only way to get to Columbia that we know of," says Doyle. "Don't know how it works, but they say it do."

"Who says it does?" I ask.

"People you don't need to worry about, Mister DeWitt. All you need to know is that you will have to rescue that girl and we will expect her back here unharmed, or the deal is off and you head back straight to the noose."

I hate BOI Agents. They're all holier-than-thou pricks, the lot of them. But, regardless of the ultimatum, I need information, because I'm not going after this girl only to have her die on my watch.

"Look," I growl, "I need information about what I'm going up against, without it, I can't—"

"—_Information_ which you will learn at the lighthouse. You are either capable," counteres McNally, "or you are not. There is no middle ground."

I grunt in acknowledgement, knowing it's utterly useless to try and get the BOI Agent to divulge anything more than he already has. I guess if this Elizabeth dies, then I'm going to be running for the rest of my very short life. I look over the picture of the girl, memorizing her face. The government wants this Elizabeth very badly, and that seems to be an understatement. Who could she be that the BOI is willing to turn to _me_, of all people?

She simply sat and read in the picture, sitting in some great library somewhere and smiling softly into a book. Who could she be? The kidnapped child of a foreign dignitary? Of a member of the United States government? My mind runs wild with all the possibilities of who she could be and what she could mean to anyone.

But there are no answers to be found in mind's flights-of-fancy, she remains an enigma until I find her in a _floating city_ somewhere over the Atlantic.

Life's a trip, isn't it?

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Just a bit of harmless fun that came along with playing Infinite, mostly centered around on fixing timeline discrepancies and making Comstock a slightly more believable and far more dangerous antagonist than he is in the BioShock canon. This was originally going to be in third-person, but since I really enjoy writing first-person and Bioshock is an FPS at its core, I decided a first-person story should do well.

Chapter Notes:

Chicago: We don't know where Booker grows up in canon, but I think it's safe to say he grows up in New York City. The fact that this Booker grew up in Chicago, would have been around six during the time of the Haymarket Riots (making him around ten years old at the time of the Wounded Knee Massacre), and was involved in the Spanish-American War (the 'damned hill' he references is the Battle of San Juan Hill) and the Boxer Rebellion rather than Wounded Knee should tell us that he's not quite the same Booker we meet in Infinite. Constants and variables.

Columbia: Booker mentions 'The White City' when referencing his sister and Columbia. This is because the 1893 Chicago World Fair was known as the "World's Columbian Exposition", centered around a meticulously constructed White City built over Jackson Park, believed to be the 'ideal city', and was one of the biggest moments at the turn of the 20th century, fostering the sentiment of American exceptionalism and so on. When referencing his sister, Booker makes a slight nod to her being a victim of Dr. H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who operated during the 1890s in Chicago out of his converted hotel.

Garryowen: Is another name for the United States Seventh Cavalry, which I believe is the one Booker and Slate operated under.

Slate: Is dead, absolutely dead. Booker killed him, and not for the convoluted sense of heroism or honor they share in canon. Booker has a legitimate reason to be going to Columbia; he's not deluding himself with the 'Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt' mantra.

BOI: The Old-timey name (Bureau of Investigation) for what would eventually become the United States FBI.

Thanks for reading,  
>Geist.<p> 


	2. A Lighthouse

Ouroboros

2. A Lighthouse

* * *

><p>Alright, Booker. Breathe slowly. In and out, in and out. In and <em>hold<em>! Aim...

The long rifle's sights settle on a grazing ten-point buck. Damn. I've held too long. I let go of the held breath with a sigh. It's been a long while since I've had a rifle in my hands, and I'm actually surprised the Bureau boys trusted me enough to carry a gun. But, then again, I guess they couldn't expect me to rescue the girl from Columbia without nary a weapon on me.

They were even kind enough to give me a few days to get reacquainted with the natural world after spending the better part of a year cramped in a hot cell in the middle of Tennessee. That's how I find myself here, deep in the woods of Maine, before I make the trek to a lighthouse some miles off the Atlantic Coast and then somehow make my way to a floating city from there.

I love the outdoors, and I'm not saying this as an inmate who has been deprived of such stimuli for so long, I genuinely enjoy everything about nature: from hiking, to hunting, to camping. After Mama went from disease, I entertained the idea of simply up and leaving for Alaska during the goldrush. I would be one of those mountain men who went up north a boy and came back down a man with a beard like a bird's nest and gold ingots spilling out his pockets.

Other nights, I'd just wonder what it would be like to stay there forever: I'd divorce myself from money, from family, from politics, and take on the meager life of a woodsman, alone with my thoughts. I would go into town for paper and pencils, and then put that pencil to that paper and write whatever came to me. And that would be my first book.

I was a damned fool back then.

I raise the long rifle back to eye height and take aim once more. In and out, in and out, in and _hold_! Steady aim, and... fire!

The buck staggers at the shot, placed just above the heart, and drops nearly immediately. People always say it's the most humane way to kill a buck, the most harmless way to do so; I often have to stifle a laugh at the thought: humanely killing?

Killing is not harmless.

With that thought reverberating through the mind, I stalk through the dense forest floor and stop right by the buck: he's a big fella, that's for sure. I'll probably have to gut him right here and carry the meat back to the cabin in my pack. Or maybe one of the BOI agents who thinks I don't notice him watching me from that tree can come down and lend a helping hand.

Withdrawing a knife attached to my belt, I kneel down in front of it and set to work.

* * *

><p>Any good hunter will tell you to use the entirety of the animal you're hunting. And, truthfully, every part has a use: the fur for rugs and clothes, the meat and organs for food, and the antlers could even be used to construct some rudimentary weapons. The problem today is that I'm simply too loaded down to bring the entire buck back with me, so I have to leave the animal and double back for it later.<p>

Of course, when I do eventually circle back around, the carcass is being devoured by opportunistic coyotes. Shaking my head, I let the beasts have the meat and head back to the cabin with a whistle and a skip in my step.

It's when I get started on slicing the the liver into fine, manageable flanks, that the inevitable knocking comes at the cheap door of the cabin. I throw a dishtowel, provided to me by the BOI agents before they receded into the forests to observe, over my shoulder and head for the door, opening it to find McNally without his Southern sidekick this time.

"I see you're cooking," says the Agent with something approaching a thin-lipped smile, "I take it you've been enjoying the fresh air and open space, then?"

"Very much so," I reply, returning to the liver in the kitchen. "I'm making dinner; should I set aside a plate for you?"

"That depends on what it is."

"Wild mushrooms, liver, and sweetbreads," I reply, smirking at the disgusted look that makes its way onto the Agent's face. "I trust you're more of the muscle meat type."

"Yes, fortunately," the man says with a leery look as he takes a seat. "Your paperwork came through today. All you need to do is sign it and we can get underway tomorrow." He sets three folders on the rickety table I've been using for everything from food to writing my thoughts down. "This is your official pardon," he says, opening one folder and revealing an official document with the United States seal, then moving to the next: "then, your identity change," he continues, pointing to an official looking document that did not have the United States seal.

"It says my name is still Booker DeWitt," I comment idly, inspecting the new identity, containing a birth certificate and picture of myself.

"And you will also be a well-regarded British citizen that was born and raised in the town of Portsmouth before moving to London. Believe me when I say no one will be looking hard enough to link you with Slate and his men."

I look to the third folder. "And that one?"

"That contains the deed to your new home in London. The one you'll get after delivering Elizabeth safely to us. It's in a nice neighborhood, if that's what you're wondering."

"Well, shit, you guys really weren't joking about this," I whistle low. "It looks good," I say after a long time inspecting the three documents. "When do we start with this?"

* * *

><p>The next morning dawns cold and gray, surprising for the summer. And the day worsens when at nine in the morning, the time I am expected to be leaving for the lighthouse, a torrential downpour comes in hazy gray sheets, striking the land with divine wrath. Still, we come up humping up the forest paths, rain against our faces, across meadows and glades and onto a horribly unsteady pier slighted by loose floorboards and long rotted wood.<p>

The Atlantic swells and churns with a foamy sort of vigor; it's hardly a "Good morning" from the sea.

McNally, in a bright yellow poncho, leads me to a makeshift bench covered by an overhanging wooden board, which acted like a leaky roof. And a leaky roof is better than no roof at all. We sit for a time and just wait, enjoying the thunderous claps and the cadence of the rain.

"They'll be here soon enough," the BOI Agent says after fifteen minutes of waiting, evidently up to his breaking point in patience (which, admittedly, seems to be pretty low). "I have other things to attend to at the moment," he stands and jabs a soaked hand out toward me, which I take. "Good luck, Mister DeWitt, I think I speak for all of us when I say I hope to see you soon."

"I'll get your girl, don't you worry," I reply, shaking his hand firmly.

A ghost of a smile flits across his normally enigmatic expression. "Good," he says simply before turning on his heel and disappearing into the downpour. He leaves, but the boat never seems to come; I wait thirty minutes and feel my eyes droop the longer I wait for my transport.

Eventually, I fall asleep.

* * *

><p><em>I am running through gray sleet melting into flagons of stone.<em>

_Men guard against the howling wind with umbrellas like shields, women strap their purses to their body like fine bandoliers. I look up for the scantest second and feel the pelting, freezing rain coming in fast with fat, heavy flakes snow shoring them. It's not too much further, I have to keep going, and that's enough to keep me from stopping to take a breath or heed the burning sensation in my chest._

_The alleyway is as depressing and grimy as it was when I first came here, looking for a loan to pay off debts. No legitimate bank would ever consider helping me so I had to turn to these men. _

_The door in which the black-market bank lay behind is heavy and solid, but easily broken down with a bullet or two. I thump against the door once, twice, thrice. Nobody answers._

_"I know you're in there!" I yell, but still no response. "Fucking come out of there!"_

_Finally, another voice answers. "Why are you here, Mister DeWitt?" The voice is surprisingly calm. "We had a deal, didn't we?"_

_"Fuck you, you know that's bullshit!"_

_"And yet, I cannot change it. I recommend you leave before you harm yourself."_

_Fuck this guy, fuck him and the people he works for! I shoot the lock out from the door. "Anna! Anna I'm coming in!" Raising my foot, I thrust firmly into the door, rocking it back and revealing..._

_Something I can't quite believe._

* * *

><p>"Anna... Anna?"<p>

I wake up in a boat with two people, covered in their own ponchos.

"Who is Anna?" One of them asks, a woman with a British accent, though it seems to be in jest, as if she already knows who this Anna is.

"I..." I start, wracking my head in confusion. "I don't know."

"Well, that's not strange, I suppose," the uncaring voice returned.

"How... how long have I been out?"

A man, also English-accented, is the one who answers. "Well, I couldn't quite rightly say, Mr. DeWitt, you were fast asleep when we arrived at the pier. It wasn't much effort to move you from one place to another."

"And you couldn't just wake me up?"

The woman shrugs. "It seemed like a good dream, did it not?"

"It wasn't."

"Oh. Well, I apologize then."

I shrug off the insincere apology and turn my face to the sky, allowing the pelting rain to momentarily blind me. What was that dream? It felt so vivid, so real. Like I was there on that sidewalk in the freezing rain and snow. Even watching men die in that stupid charge up San Juan Hill and watching Peking burn around me seemed more surreal than the dream.

Suddenly, it strikes me to ask the question. "Who are you people?"

"Us?" The woman asks, turning back just enough that a loose strand of raven-black hair falls from underneath her hood. "We're the people giving you asylum in our country after this job is done. You didn't think we'd simply give you land and property, did you?"

"You know, I actually did."

"That was stupid of you."

"Reckon so, miss."

A pause, then: "A man of few words are we?"

"What interest have you in the girl?" I demand, ignoring her little jibe.

"None that concerns you, Mister DeWitt. As the American must have told you: you are tasked with recovering Elizabeth and bringing her to us. That is your only job and all that you will be briefed on. Anything else is extraneous information."

"No need to get testy, just trying to make small-talk, Miss."

"Try a different topic, then, it might get you further."

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Yes, perhaps you should."

The man, through all of this, stays quiet at the front and continues his rowing, much to the chagrin of the woman. "And, why, exactly doesn't he have to row?" She asks, a bit huffily.

"Because DeWitt doesn't," is the man's lightly mocking reply.

"Doesn't what? Doesn't row?"

"Yes."

"Why-ever not?"

"Not enough oars," he returns simply.

"Oh!" The woman growls. "You are a most infuriating man, has anyone ever told you so?"

"Once or twice."

I ignore their pointless, circular banter and focus on the solid feel of the guns McNally has so kindly graced me with. The first of the two being the always-reliable Smith & Wesson Model 10, a black revolver, and a heavily modified version of Samuel Colt's new handgun that came out last year. He even gave me a nice holster to strap them in under the topcoat I wear.

I suppose I could simply take out my revolver, empty two shells into these people, and run as far as possible. But would that really get me anywhere in the end? If McNally hadn't been bullshitting me, this is a golden opportunity to start anew with a new life in a new city.

Elizabeth. She is still as much a mystery as she was when I first saw the photograph of her several days ago. Pretty as a picture, but a tragic one, in her locked tower. Who could she possibly be that both the U.S. government and the British want as well? Well, I reckon it doesn't matter. Bring the girl to Washington, and wipe away the debt to the nation. That's the beginning and end of it, really.

Still, transporting live human cargo, with wants and dreams of her own, like chattel?

What if she likes it in Columbia, then what? What if she don't want to come to no government hearing because it sounds like a trap (which, admittedly, it does)? Do I just drag her back kicking and screaming to D.C.?

Lots of questions, really. But not a lot of questions that could be answered in a single night.

Sighing, I close my eyes and try to drift away in spite the thunderous rain and violent rhythms of the sea. It doesn't work, but, nevertheless, we arrive at our destination soon enough. It is a big, yet fairly nondescript otherwise, lighthouse. The exterior was once-eggshell white but years of accumulated grime had turned it into a particularly unappealing shade of off-gray. The wooden dock that extended some yards out over the sea was as rickety as the one I'd been waiting on when i had fallen asleep.

The man draws in the oars as we coast to a stop next to a wooden ladder onto the flimsy dock, which I grasp and heave myself over.

"Do not waste this opportunity," warns the woman, "you know what will happen if you do."

"Right. Yes, I understand."

"Good. We will return here once you are back with the girl."

I nod.

The man speaks this time: "I trust we shall see you here, DeWitt?"

"Maybe. Depends."

"On what, Mister DeWitt?"

"On a lot of things, but I'll try my hardest to get your girl back."

Thunder crashes, but no words are exchanged for a few stretching moments.

"I suppose that's the best we can ask for."

"It is."

"Good-bye, Mister DeWitt. I should hope we meet once more before this dreadful business is finished with. Thomas, we should be away."

The man perks up at the sound of his name and grasps the oars once more. He pushes off and the boat drifts away into the murky gray swell. Alone, I turn and face the lighthouse, light flashing counterclockwise from the top.

"Alright," I say to myself. "Time's a wasting."

Wood gives way to stone steps and a large, unadorned oaken door some paces from the top of the stairs. I step up to it and knock clearly thrice. "It's... Booker DeWitt. I'm expected?"

There is no answer. Predictably, McNally lied to me about there being 'help' inside the lighthouse. Fortunately they left the door unlocked, which is good enough, I suppose. Pushing the door aside, I step into a circular antechamber, at the center of which, a basin sits, adorned by a quote. Some Christian baptismal bullshit, wash my hands and somehow I'll be clean. I hardly give it a second thought before climbing up the spiral stairwell to the next floor, adorned with a sink, a stove, and a man tied to a ricket wooden chair crowned by a hangman's noose.

Pinned to his chest, a note reads:

_Do not disappoint us, DeWitt. We haven't forgotten_.

I've never been particularly fond of scare tactics, and it's a bit laughable that Washington's boys think I need the stick and not the carrot, but I did kill a United States Captain and eight other men, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some still hold grudges. Some notes on the map of the country suggest the dead man worked in the lighthouse, and was instructed by a man initialed "Z.C." to stop anyone who came through the lighthouse door.

I guess it didn't work out all that well for him. All the instruments of torture, plyers and knives and hammers, tells me he didn't go peaceful-like.

Not knowing what else I could do but shrug, I slipped up the next floor and back out into the rain. The shores of Maine looked so very distant from here, little more than a sparse smattering of halogen lights. No time to dawdle, however, so I march around the lens room, where the light has seemingly switched, now spinning clockwise.

_How in the hell...? No one else is here, how could the light have switched like that?_

This place accounts for the weird and eerie in spades, that much is certain. I eventually come around to the door, an intricately carved mass of steel and glass, punctuated by the metallic facade of an angel and three bells below her.

"What the hell are these things?" I mutter to myself, inspecting the bronze chimes.

"Well, they're bells," answers a whimsical voice behind me.

"Truly, I assure you, there's nothing sinister about them," another continues, the accented voice of a woman this time.

I spin on my heel and find myself staring at a man and a woman in ponchos, not entirely dissimilar to the ones that dropped me off at the pier, but these two are different. The voices are familiar. The woman looks up, her face plain but somehow striking in its plainness. I'd recognize this woman from anywhere, even if I would never see her again in my entire life:

"You. You're the two from the jail cell."

"Astute observation," the man says dryly.

"Why are you here this time?"

The woman laughs. "Oh, look, he's learning!"

"Doubtful," said the man.

"Oh, _posh_, now you're just being contrary."

"Purely."

"You're a fool."

"I believe you wouldn't be able to judge me in that regard if it were so."

"Yes, I suppose that's true."

"Perhaps _you're_ right. Perhaps _I_ am. Only time will tell."

"'_Only time will tell_'? Have you no imagination? You sound like one of _them_."

"I love the banter," I break into their insane conversation, "really, I do. But it doesn't answer why you're here."

"Oh!" Exclaims the woman, as though remembering something very important. "Show it to him, will you?"

"And why can't you?" Asks the man defensively, and receives a withering look in response:

"Because _you're_ the one that has it."

The man reaches underneath the poncho into the pocket of his trousers with a skeptical look, which turns to surprise when he seems to find something. The woman appears smug as he draws out a small sheet of hard-stock paper and inspects it quickly:

"So it seems. I can never remember these things," he says to the woman as he thrusts the paper in my direction. Arching an eyebrow at these ludicrous twins, I step up to the man and take the paper from his hand. On it are the drawings of a scroll, a key, and a sword, and numbers under each of the three. I look back at the bells and find a matching carving on each of the three bells, respectively.

I turn back to the twins, only to find they've disappeared into thin air.

"Strange," I supply appropriately as I step to the bells. Once for the scroll, twice for the key, twice for the sword. With each tinkle of the bells, the lights above them grew stronger until I ring the sword twice, and a loud tinkle from the door travels into the ether...

Only to be answered by the most terrifying rumbling I've ever felt, a musical note so loud that it shakes the very foundation of the lighthouse, and I have to grab onto a railing to prevent myself from pitching over. The clouds glow red, the world shakes over and over, and the lighthouse answers, almost as if it's communicating with the darkened sky.

Eventually the rumbling stops, and the door opens revealing a small room with a expensive-looking red leather chair as the centerpiece.

I'm guessing they want me on this fancy chair. So I move over to it and sit, only to immediately regret that decision when shackles come up from under the armrest and lock themselves over my rest.

"What the hell!?" I blurt aloud, trying to move, but the shackles are thick and strong, I have no way to escape.

A voice comes from seemingly nowhere as the floor seems to collapse and thick, triangular walls seem to jut from the empty spaces: "Make yourself ready, Pilgrim. The bindings are a safeguard, fear not."

That ain't _no_ goddamn comfort.

The triangular walls close around me, laden with pressure gauges and all sorts of knick-knacks I can't read, accompanied only by a small window, when the ground slips and bends perpendicularly. The hat McNally had given me slips off and falls into the void as a large noise erupts and four cylinders belch fire. I may have lost the hat, but the holster the BOI agent gave me prevented me from losing the guns as well, so I have that much to be thankful for.

"Prepare for Ascension," that unnatural voice said once more. "Ascension in the count of five..."

"What the hell is going on?"

"Four..."

"No, no, no, no..."

"Three... Two... One..."

I can't help but let out a small yelp when this device thrusts upward and a sense of vertigo overtakes me. "Ascension!" Meeps the feminine but mechanical voice with something approaching glee, repeating it several more times with no less gladness. Calm down, Booker, it's going to be fine. Everything's going to be just fine.

"5,000 feet," says the voice as we push toward the clouds. "10,000 feet," it continues as the device shakes from the turbulence of storm, "15,000 feet" it answers just as we burst through the clouds and the sweeping vista of a city stretches out for miles all around.

"Hallelujah," someone says, but I'm too busy admiring this improbable city.

"W-what?" I can't help but blurt out as the golden statue of an angel rises up in the distance, the most visually stunning piece of an already enchanting city.

Goddamn. It's real. It's actually real.

I knew the BOI Agents wouldn't go this far to pull my leg, but part of me still didn't believe that there was a girl in a floating city, even as I walked toward that lighthouse. But here that floating city is, as real as real can be. I don't know whether to be amazed or frightened by it. However, I can't sidetracked. The most important thing is, if the city is real, then the girl must be here. And if she's here, it's only a matter of time before I find her.

My time ain't come, I'm not dying just yet.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Next chapter covers Booker's trek toward Monument Island, with several changes here and there.

Chapter Notes:

**"Killing is not Harmless"**: Is a reference to Spec Ops: The Line's ironic "Killing is harmless" tagline.

**Liver and Sweetbreads**: Booker is a former soldier, a convicted murderer, and he prefers organ meat to muscle meat. What does that tell you about the man?

**The Dream**: I liked the idea of inverting it from canon, where Booker is inside his own office trying to ward off Robert, whereas now he is attacking their hideout, looking for Anna.

**Boat Ride**: The Luteces are not the ones who brought Booker to the lighthouse, if you didn't catch that the woman's hair was dark, not red, and the man's name was Thomas. This is because Booker has a real benefactor this time, not some made up creditors. How they expected Booker to get to Columbia without the Lutece twins intervention, however, is a question you'll have to wait for to be answered.

Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around for the next chapter,  
>Geist.<p> 


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